This might sound like a dumb question but... I am going to root and i thought I read that once you are on a Rooted phone, you cant download regular apps from the market, you can only download apps for rooted specific phones. Is this true?

Also - If I root my phone tonight, and the new 2.2 official comes out a week from now, do I have to root again? or can I just download the 2.2 from OTA server?

This might sound like a dumb question but... I am going to root and i thought I read that once you are on a Rooted phone, you cant download regular apps from the market, you can only download apps for rooted specific phones. Is this true? No this is not true. You will be able to download any and now all apps from the Market. The restriction is actually reverse of what you are saying. When you are not rooted you can only download certain apps from the market. The apps for rooted phones will download but you will not be able to use them. With a rooted phone you can now download any apps and they will work.

Also - If I root my phone tonight, and the new 2.2 official comes out a week from now, do I have to root again? or can I just download the 2.2 from OTA server?

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If you are rooted and you flash (load) a custom ROM then you will already have the 2.2 OS. Most of the developers put blocks in their ROMs so that when an OTA comes out from Verizon it is blocked. Therefore, if the 2.2 OTA comes out next week (which I doubt) and you rooted this week and put a custom ROM on, you would not get the OTA and you would not have to re-root.

Roms are easy to swap. In most cases, You can swap ROMS in under 10 minutes.
1: Download the ROM you use.
2: Save the ROM to the root of your SD card
3: Rename the ROM to Update.zip
4: Boot into recovery
5: Install update.zip
6: Reboot phone and enjoy!

Of course there are other steps involved, but thet will be determined if you are using clockwork or SPRecovery. The basic process is the same for the ROM, kernel, and theme (if you are using them). Just remember to make a back up, and dont be afraid to ask questions.

Forgot one thing, can we back up apps while not being rooted, or is that only a root pleasure?

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Wow, gonna try to answer your questions. I know what you mean by an answer seems to lead to more questions...... hahahah

Once you have flashed a ROM you will not get a notification that there is an update like you do from Verizon. Watching for updates is sort of on you. Trust me this will become addicting. Once you have chosen a ROM I would suggest becoming familar with that developer's site/thread. There you will be able to read anybody's issues with the rom and what fixes were decided. Also on in that thread you will see where they are talking about "updates" aka next version. Then you will know once the developer has put out a new version of his rom and you can download it then. Its pretty easy and not as overwhelming as you would think. I am all about bling so I am always looking for different roms and themes. I probably swap roms and themes once a week.

ROM Manager is a great app when it works. It works hand in hand with ClockworkMod which is an alternate recovery method from SPrecovery. I use it and for the most part do not have too many issues with it. However, its a good thing if you know how to load roms and themes through recovery because ROM Manager doesn't always like to play nice. In order for RM to work right and be able to download ROMs you have to have both parts. In the market there is a free ROM Manager and a premium (paid) ROM Manager. A couple of things to remember when using ROM Manager is to always clear RM cache (go into RM > menu > clear download cache) and if possible run WiFi when using RM.

For the most part you do install themes just like ROMs. You can install some themes from ROM Manager but if you are using SPrecovery then you would download the theme to your computer, rename it to update.zip and then put it on the root of your sd card, reboot into recovery and install from there like a ROM.

I believe backing up apps is a root issue. I have Mybackup Pro and it always asks me for superuser permissions which is root. I am not sure if there are apps in the market that will backup your apps without root, you would have to look for that.

So if you want to use RM and used sprecovery will it not work? So last thing for now...I think. If you install a theme, how would you go back to the stock theme so that I could put a different theme on? Secondly, I've seen some things where you can change little things like the battery indicator or notification bar color, can you do that if your using a theme too or will it mess up the stability?

RM will give you the option to flash clockwork to your phone. Im a cheapskate, so I wont pay for RM. Plus, I feel if you are modding your phone, you should know what you are doing to it. It will give you a better point of reference if you know how to manually do these things, instead of just pushing a button on an app. This was an issue with the DroidMod "wonder app", and just scan the forums for problems with RM and clockwork people have had. Most of the problems would be easily solved if people had an idea of what they were doing (or cared to find out what they were doing) instead of letting someone else do the work for them.

So I tried to flash sprecovery and rsd lite says it failed and now my droid is stuck on a black screen, someone help please

well i got it off the black screen and can boot it up and works ok, when i turn it of and hold x while turning it back on the normal menu to create nandroid back up, factory reset etc. wont come up just the triangle with the exclimation point and the phone laying beside it

I think its something with the drivers, everytime i connect my droid it starts downloading drivers which I don't understand because I've a). used my phone before on my computer to transfer music, and b.)downloaded the driver per the step by step and it still does it

i rooted last week using the instructions 'wilk' is looking at. I now have sapphire 0.7.0 running. I like what 'Bob Damnit' is saying as far as learning how to do things manually. I'm very lost on what to do next now that i have rooted but i am heading over to the sapphire site to see what i can learn.
One question i do have though. I read a lot where about when loading something on your SD card, you first change the name of the file to 'update.zip' as i did when i first loaded sapphire. what i don't know is once you load something you have renamed update.zip, do you then delete it so that you can again use update.zip to load whatever you want to next?

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